This documentary sounds great! I bet its funny as fuck! Plus a remake of the same peeps: nice idea!

Picturehouse and New Line have acquired rights to "The King of Kong," a documentary that premieres in competition at Slamdance tonight.
Pic is about rivals battling for supremacy in vidgame Donkey Kong'

In a mid to high six-figure package deal, Picturehouse won rights to distribute the documentary in theaters this summer, while sister company New Line gets remake rights and control of docu distribution rights outside North America.

New Line will fast-track a feature remake, with the original's director Seth Gordon attached to helm the feature version and producer Ed Cunningham set as exec producer on the remake. Beau Bauman will be a producer on the remake.

"The King of Kong" chronicles a rivalry between two gamers, Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell, as they battle for the title of world champ of the arcade game.

Picturehouse president Bob Berney, New Line Prods. prexy Toby Emmerich and chief operating officer Richard Brener found irresistible appeal in Wiebe's struggle to stop a personal losing streak, and the ruthless tactics of record holder Mitchell, who routinely compares himself to Helen of Troy and the Red Baron.

Angling for a remake deal, Endeavor Independent showed the film early to New Line, where Brener's assistant Dave Neustadter coaxed his boss to watch it. Brener became obsessed, viewing the film more than 20 times and pressing Emmerich to be aggressive. They enlisted Berney, who decided the docu was compelling enough to work as a theatrical.

"It's brutal out there for documentaries, but these two gamer guys are so compelling, and the story gets so crazy and theatrical, that I think it has a strong shot to catch on," Berney said.

New Line has the rights? shit! that means there's NO WAY peter jackson will get to direct this now. and without peter jackson, you can say goodbye to the original kong cast as well. no jack black. no adrien brody. no jamie bell as an annoying kid who hangs around and does nothing. and of course, no andy serkis doing motion capture for a CGI donkey kong.

i hear the geeks over at theonekong.net are in an uproar, and i can't blame them. with jackson and the original kong cast, this could've made THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS. but now, with bob shaye and new line screwing this project up over their pride and greed, it'll probably only end up making HUNDREDS.

I've actually seen one of these guys on an episode of MTV's "True Life." Apparently in addition to gunning for the "king of Kong," he's one of the only people in the world to have played a perfect game of Pac-Man.

Gaming, especially at that level where people compete to be perfect, seems like such a bizarre culture. And it certainly breeds a lot of weirdos (it's like spelling bees, except with more testosterone!). This docu actually looks kind of interesting, hopefully it rolls out somewhere near me.

i had a lot of difficulty turning off my hipster veneer of snark filled vehemence at the sad sacks so amply on display...but I had a much harder time averting my gaze from the utter train wreck of wonky Donkey Kong swots and classic gaming aficionados that populate the highly compelling (if wildly manipulative) tale of the controversy surrounding the highest score ever compiled on Shigeru Miyamoto's brutally challenging platform game that expertly melded POPEYE and KING KONG.

but you can't really hate a movie that features Mr. Awesome...you just can't.

and while pretty much ALL the sport-pic cliches are patently obvious (savvy sport movie and 80's cinema buffs can 'prolly right now name 2 or 3 songs you just know will get played in a film like this), it's the utter charm and good nature of Steve Wiebe, he who shatters a KONG scoring record while his child complains of poopy-pants and much needed butt-wiping, that make the picture worthwhile...you can't but root for the poor schlub, even with the questionable parenting skillz, he's abundantly sympathetic.

and I would be remiss to point out that the hilariously pompous villain of the piece, Billy Mitchell, hangs his hypocritical self out so openly and honestly that you even feel a smidgen of empathy for his blatant pathetic-ness...and he most likely jerks off with baby oil while combing his hair and watching videos of himself.

Personally, I'm an atheist in the voting booth and a theist in the movie theatre. I separate the morality of religion with the spirituality and solace of it. There is something boring about atheism.

The scene that kills me is Wiebe playing while his kid is screaming for him to get off the game and wipe his butt.

What I most identified with in the doc was the sense of malaise that Wiebe had in wanting and pursuing this one thing. He's lost jobs, he's married with kids, and he wants to do something to make his mark in the world, even if it's just this one trivial thing. I've been there.

I know that the film's controversial in how it portrays Mitchell, but there's no getting around the stuff he said and his actions around Wiebe. It seemed mean-spirited to me.

It really is nerd-sploitation, but with a real affection for these guys whose lives seem to have been locked into a certain course of obsession 25 years ago. It's also pretty slight, and seems intent to tell a story which, even with a casual google search can be shown to contain elements of wishful thinking and dramatic 'reconstruction'.
But fuck it, every documentary has elements of polemic and persuasion, and this one manages 70+ fascinating and funny minutes on a gaming championship so retro and redundant for those with no memories of the early '80's' that it may as well be fiction.
There remains to be great a great documentary made on the Korean PC Bangs and gaming tournaments where the gamers are treated like rock stars and venerated in their home towns. This is an intimate, human story about playing the same arcade video game for decades; about very average guys who, in their own way, aspire to some unique, if obscure claim to greatness.

seven and a half.

Last edited by tapehead on Thu Jan 31, 2008 7:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

After I saw it I found some interesting discussion initiated by gaming official Walter Day on Twin Galaxies forum regarding various issues of accuracy in the documentary. Walter is at the centre of the storm as it develops in this documentary, and it's interesting to see that whatever exaggeration or dramatising that might be occurring with the other characters, Walter seems as earnest and true in 'real life' as he does in this hilarious documentary about persistence and small victories.

Last edited by tapehead on Sat Feb 02, 2008 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I love this docco so much. It's a testament to how life can easily mimic Hollywood with a few selective cuts. It's all been said before, so I wont go on but if you want something cool and a little different to watch track down this bad boy!

Nordling wrote:Yeah, they shouldn't make it over the top. Just play it natural.

Nathan Fillion for Wiebe!

Ooh, nice idea for casting Nordling.

And what a great movie this was but I thought that Billy Mitchell wasn't nearly as bad as his weasel-y buddy at Funland who was watching Wiebe play and keeping contact with Billy about what was going on the whole time.

I can't quite place it but he just bothered me a whole lot more than Billy ever did in that movie. I hope he never gets that stupid kill screen on Donkey Kong.

This is a profound performance,On March 19, 1983, Billy Mitchell set a then-World Record of 957,300 points at the Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard in Ottumwa, Iowa. That record stood for 25 years until Ike Hall of Port Angeles, WA scored 1,033,000 points on August 10, 2008, lifting the record 86,000 points. Even though the World Record was able to creep up by only 86,000 points in those 25 years, Steve has managed the unimaginable and has lifted it another 106,000 points by scoring 1,139,500 points.

This is fortuitous, and good promotion for the upcoming E3 Gaming conference thingamy, where Wiebe is gonna try to regain his Donkey Kong World record on live tv.

This is a profound performance,On March 19, 1983, Billy Mitchell set a then-World Record of 957,300 points at the Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard in Ottumwa, Iowa. That record stood for 25 years until Ike Hall of Port Angeles, WA scored 1,033,000 points on August 10, 2008, lifting the record 86,000 points. Even though the World Record was able to creep up by only 86,000 points in those 25 years, Steve has managed the unimaginable and has lifted it another 106,000 points by scoring 1,139,500 points.

This is fortuitous, and good promotion for the upcoming E3 Gaming conference thingamy, where Wiebe is gonna try to regain his Donkey Kong World record on live tv.

But he didn’t stop there. Shortly after setting the new Kong mark, Mitchell went after the ape's lesser known son, racking up 1,270,900 in Donkey Kong, Jr. to claim that record, too. It took Mitchell 2 hours and 42 minutes to set the Donkey Kong mark and 3 hours and 58 minutes to top Donkey Kong, Jr.

Why go after both records? You could say Mitchell was just caught up in the moment.

"I remember a lot of celebration; hugs, kisses and a lot of hooting and hollering," he said in a release. "Once that died down, I stood there looking at Donkey Kong Jr. and thought 'there's one more thing I have to take care of'."